In an unparalleled collaboration, two leading global thinkers in technology and foreign affairs give us their widely anticipated, transformational vision of the future: a world where everyone is connected - a world full of challenges and benefits that are ours to meet and to harness. Eric Schmidt is one of Silicon Valley’s great leaders, having taken Google from a small startup to one of the world’s most influential companies. Jared Cohen is the director of Google Ideas and a former adviser to secretaries of state Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton.

The First 20 Hours: How to Learn Anything... Fast!

In The First 20 Hours, Josh Kaufman offers a systematic approach to rapid skill acquisition: how to learn any new skill as quickly as possible. His method shows you how to deconstruct complex skills, maximize productive practice, and remove common learning barriers. By completing just 20 hours of focused, deliberate practice you'll go from knowing absolutely nothing to performing noticeably well. What do you want to learn?

Making Habits, Breaking Habits: Why We Do Things, Why We Don't, and How to Make Any Change Stick

Say you want to start going to the gym or practicing a musical instrument. How long should it take before you stop having to force it and start doing it automatically? The surprising answers are found in Making Habits, Breaking Habits, a leading psychologist’s popular examination of one of the most powerful and underappreciated processes in the brain. Although people like to think that they are in control, the vast majority of human behavior occurs without any decision-making or conscious thought.

The highest-ranking Soviet bloc intelligence official ever to defect to the West, Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa is at it again. A quarter century ago, in his international bestseller Red Horizons, Pacepa exposed the massive crimes and corruption of his former boss, Romanian President Nicolae Ceausescu, giving the dictator a nervous breakdown and inspiring him to send assassination squads to the U.S. to find his former spy chief and kill him. They failed.

Knocking on Heaven's Door: How Physics and Scientific Thinking Illuminate the Universe and the Modern World

The latest developments in physics have the potential to radically revise our understanding of the world: its makeup, its evolution, and the fundamental forces that drive its operation. Knocking on Heaven's Door is an exhilarating and accessible overview of these developments and an impassioned argument for the significance of science. There could be no better guide than Lisa Randall.

The Art of Deception: Controlling the Human Element of Security

The world's most infamous hacker offers an insider's view of the low-tech threats to high-tech security. Kevin Mitnick's exploits as a cyber-desperado and fugitive form one of the most exhaustive FBI manhunts in history and have spawned dozens of articles, books, films, and documentaries. Since his release from federal prison, in 1998, Mitnick has turned his life around and established himself as one of the most sought-after computer security experts worldwide.

Brilliant Blunders: From Darwin to Einstein - Colossal Mistakes by Great Scientists That Changed Our Understanding of Life and the Universe

We all make mistakes. Nobody’s perfect. Not even some of the greatest geniuses in history, as Mario Livio tells us in this marvelous story of scientific error and breakthrough. Charles Darwin, William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), Linus Pauling, Fred Hoyle, and Albert Einstein were all brilliant scientists. Each made groundbreaking contributions to his field - but each also stumbled badly. These five scientists expanded our knowledge of life on Earth, the evolution of the Earth itself, and the evolution of the universe, despite and because of their errors. As Mario Livio luminously explains, the scientific process advances through error.

Exploring Metaphysics

This mind-bending tour of metaphysics applies philosophy to the forefront of today's knowledge. Over the course of 24 fascinating lectures, Professor Johnson thinks through the big questions about humans and the universe: The relationship between the mind and the brain, how consciousness emerges from neurochemical processes, the existence of God, human free will, the possibility of time travel, and whether we live in a multiverse or even a computer simulation.

Google Executive Chairman and ex-CEO Eric Schmidt and former SVP of Products Jonathan Rosenberg came to Google over a decade ago as proven technology executives. At the time, the company was already well-known for doing things differently, reflecting the visionary - and frequently contrarian - principles of founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. If Eric and Jonathan were going to succeed, they realized they would have to relearn everything they thought they knew about management and business.

Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind

Neuroscientist V. S. Ramachandran is internationally renowned for uncovering answers to the deep and quirky questions of human nature that few scientists have dared to address. His bold insights about the brain are matched only by the stunning simplicity of his experiments - using such low-tech tools such as cotton swabs, glasses of water, and dime-store mirrors.

The Secret Anarchy of Science: Free Radicals

This thrilling exploration of some of the greatest breakthroughs in science reveals the extreme lengths some scientists go to in order to make their theories public. Fraud, suppressing evidence, and unethical or reckless PR games are sometimes necessary to bring the best and most brilliant discoveries to the world's attention. Inspiration can come from the most unorthodox of places, and Brooks introduces us to Nobel laureates who get their ideas through drugs, dreams, and hallucinations. .

For years, The Great Courses has taken lifelong learners on stirring explorations of our ancient roots; ones that bring you face to face with what history means, and how we use it to understand both the past and the present. So where's the best place to start? Right here with this eclectic and insightful collection of 36 lectures curated from our most popular ancient history courses.

Conform: Exposing the Truth About Common Core and Public Education

#1 best-selling author and popular radio and television host Glenn Beck considers the hot-button issue of education in the US, exposing the weaknesses of the Common Core school curriculum and examining why liberal solutions fail. As he did with the issue of gun control in his thoughtful and succinct #1 best seller Control, Glenn Beck uncovers the politically motivated truth behind the continual failures of the American educational system and offers real, tangible solutions for change.

Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future

In a world of self-driving cars and big data, smart algorithms and Siri, we know that artificial intelligence is getting smarter every day. Though all these nifty devices and programs might make our lives easier, they're also well on their way to making "good" jobs obsolete. A computer winning Jeopardy might seem like a trivial, if impressive, feat, but the same technology is making paralegals redundant as it undertakes electronic discovery, and is soon to do the same for radiologists.

The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies

In recent years, Google’s autonomous cars have logged thousands of miles on American highways and IBM’s Watson trounced the best human Jeopardy! players. Digital technologies — with hardware, software, and networks at their core — will in the near future diagnose diseases more accurately than doctors can, apply enormous data sets to transform retailing, and accomplish many tasks once considered uniquely human.

Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future

In the spirit of Steve Jobs and Moneyball, Elon Musk is both an illuminating and authorized look at the extraordinary life of one of Silicon Valley's most exciting, unpredictable, and ambitious entrepreneurs - a real-life Tony Stark - and a fascinating exploration of the renewal of American invention and its new makers.

Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. And the next Mark Zuckerberg won't create a social network. If you are copying these guys, you aren't learning from them. It's easier to copy a model than to make something new: doing what we already know how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. But every time we create something new, we go from 0 to 1.

The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution

Following his blockbuster biography of Steve Jobs, The Innovators is Walter Isaacson’s revealing story of the people who created the computer and the Internet. It is destined to be the standard history of the digital revolution and an indispensable guide to how innovation really happens. What were the talents that allowed certain inventors and entrepreneurs to turn their visionary ideas into disruptive realities? What led to their creative leaps? Why did some succeed and others fail?

Age of Context: Mobile, Sensors, Data and the Future of Privacy

Social media is but one of five converging forces that promise to change virtually every aspect of our lives. You know these other forces already: mobile, data, sensors and location-based technology. Combined with social media they form a new generation of personalized technology that knows us better than our closest friends. Armed with that knowledge our personal devices can anticipate what we'll need next and serve us better than a butler or an executive assistant. The resulting convergent superforce is so powerful that it is ushering in an era the authors call the Age of Context.

The Modern Scholar: Tolkien and the West: Recovering the Lost Tradition of Europe

The works of J.R.R. Tolkien are quite possibly the most widely read pieces of literature written in the 20th century. But as Professor Michael Drout illuminates in this engaging course of lectures, Tolkien's writings are built upon a centuries-old literary tradition that developed in Europe and is quite uniquely Western in its outlook and style. Drout explores how that tradition still resonates with us to this day, even if many Modernist critics would argue otherwise. He begins the course with the allegory of a tower....

Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think

Oxford professor and author Viktor Mayer-Schönberger joins Economist data editor and commentator Kenneth Cukier to deliver insight into the hottest trend in technology. "Big data" makes it possible to instantly analyze and draw conclusions from vast stores of information, enabling revolutionary breakthroughs in business, health, politics, and education. But big data also raises troubling social and privacy concerns sure to be a major talking point in the years ahead.

How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity

Modernity developed only in the West - in Europe and North America. Nowhere else did science and democracy arise; nowhere else was slavery outlawed. Only Westerners invented chimneys, musical scores, telescopes, eyeglasses, pianos, electric lights, aspirin, and soap. The question is, why? Unfortunately, that question has become so politically incorrect that most scholars avoid it. But acclaimed author Rodney Stark provides the answers in this sweeping new look at Western civilization.

American Psychosis: How the Federal Government Destroyed the Mental Illness Treatment System

E. Fuller Torrey's audiobook provides an inside perspective on the birth of the federal mental health program. On staff at the National Institute of Mental Health when the program was being developed and implemented, Torrey draws on his own first-hand account of the creation and launch of the program, extensive research, one-on-one interviews with people involved, and recently unearthed audiotapes of interviews with major figures involved in the legislation. As such, this book provides historical material previously unavailable to the public.

Cro-Magnon: How the Ice Age Gave Birth to the First Modern Humans

Best-selling author Brian Fagan brings early humans out of the deep freeze with his trademark mix of erudition, cutting-edge science, and vivid storytelling. Cro-Magnon reveals human society in its infancy, facing enormous environmental challenges - including a rival species of humans, the Neanderthals. For ten millennia, Cro-Magnons lived side by side with Neanderthals, an encounter that Fagan fills with drama.

The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers

Ben Horowitz offers essential advice on building and running a startup - practical wisdom for managing the toughest problems business school doesn’t cover, based on his popular ben’s blog. While many people talk about how great it is to start a business, very few are honest about how difficult it is to run one. The Hard Thing About Hard Things is invaluable for veteran entrepreneurs as well as those aspiring to their own new ventures, drawing from Horowitz’s personal and often humbling experiences.

Publisher's Summary

In an unparalleled collaboration, two leading global thinkers in technology and foreign affairs give us their widely anticipated, transformational vision of the future: a world where everyone is connected - a world full of challenges and benefits that are ours to meet and to harness.

Eric Schmidt is one of Silicon Valley’s great leaders, having taken Google from a small startup to one of the world’s most influential companies. Jared Cohen is the director of Google Ideas and a former adviser to secretaries of state Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton. With their combined knowledge and experiences, the authors are uniquely positioned to take on some of the toughest questions about our future: Who will be more powerful in the future, the citizen or the state? Will technology make terrorism easier or harder to carry out? What is the relationship between privacy and security, and how much will we have to give up to be part of the new digital age?

In this groundbreaking book, Schmidt and Cohen combine observation and insight to outline the promise and peril awaiting us in the coming decades. At once pragmatic and inspirational, this is a forward-thinking account of where our world is headed and what this means for people, states and businesses.

With the confidence and clarity of visionaries, Schmidt and Cohen illustrate just how much we have to look forward to - and beware of - as the greatest information and technology revolution in human history continues to evolve.

Inspiring, provocative and absorbing, The New Digital Age is a brilliant analysis of how our hyper-connected world will soon look, from two of our most prescient and informed public thinkers.

Wow. I had mixed feelings about this book. On one hand, I admired the authors’ bold imagination on complex global issues. The idealism was almost childish, but I kept reminding myself that “these are the Google guys” and gave them the benefit of the doubt.

The allure of the book revolves mainly around its passionate and revolutionary tone. More and more, the physical world is casting a kind of digital shadow where almost all human activity can be recorded. This data is a new metric available to those with access to it. However, the authors seem almost blinded by their own imagination. There is some bizarre detachment to some of their solutions. They paint pictures of Somalis running around with cell phones and snitching on war lords using a form of cyber-bullying. Let them eat cake! Or more, appropriately, let them have cell phones and data plans!

Instead of an Orwellian police state, where the government spies on its citizens…..we can have a Democratic Police State, where citizens spy on their government and each other. By stripping away privacy, the authors envision a kind of transparent super-state in which each citizen has the technological power to expose any wrong-doing. Each citizen is a reporter, a photojournalist, a spy, and vigilante. Through a system of total surveillance, we will apparently have a world of total transparency, and thereby a world where no one does anything wrong. Why? Because everyone is watching. Instead of Big Brother, we get Big Neighbor.

To justify this digital anarchy, you’ll notice the authors’ heroic image of a digital super-state in action. Citizens would cyber-bully bad governments until they topple while NGO’s [non-governmental organizations] are deployed around the world to distribute food, commodities, and technology. NGO’s replace governments by distributing resources wherever needed thereby ending poverty and dictatorships. The Digital Age apparently is one of distribution….not free trade. The role of the citizen is as an informer working “together with the State” against undesirables. Digital mob actions would keep everyone in check. The authors’ literally suggest public tribunals and community policing programs. We would have a decentralized fascist public equipped to expose wrong-doers and undermine any central authority at will. Therefore, the main ‘revolution’ of the Digital Age appears to be radicalism against…ourselves.

These are not new ideas. This policing and distribution model for society is simply getting new life because of new technology. This time, we are assured, the power will be used for good. This time, only bad people will be targeted.

If anything, this book got me thinking. Instead of destroying privacy because we can, we should focus more on how to better protect it. Privacy is a barrier between us, the public, and the government. Our lives are our own record of experiences, a secret patent to our personal belief system, a trademark for our self-image, and our very own brand of personality. Our digital self is our own intellectual property. You, Inc. The government’s role should be in protecting your privacy….and NOT in protecting the rights of the intruders.

Google isn’t sharing its secrets with the world. Why are they asking us to share ours?

Nice survey of what great things are possible, along with the potential nightmare scenarios. Much of this book discusses how the digital age will create new public policy issues, both domestic and international.

Would you try another book from Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen and/or Roger Wayne?

Probably not. It wasn't 'bad', but it was disappointing. I expected a more thoughtful analysis of the impacts of digital technology/connectedness on the way we live, work, play. Instead, I got projections of the obvious, strange examples, curious conclusions and a social agenda. It was all very facile. I expected something more engaging and thought provoking given the creds of the authors.

I hoped for a more thoughtful analysis about where the digital age was taking us. I guess I assumed the premise of the book was how our lives would change. Instead, we get commentary on the application of digital connectedness to the problems of the present. There is much social messaging against the 'state' and 'big corporations.' Any discussion of institutions is in the negative. This is an understandable bias that many of us share, but it is overdone. The example of how technology would allow states to crack down on minorities (digital genocide) was ludicrous. Institutions are created by people to sustain their societies and the things they value...how will they be better able to do this? Do we think governments and corporations might be able to leverage the digital age as effectively as individuals to deliver better services to consumers involved in their processes? Isn't there risk of individuals subverting the social norms of the majority through technological bulllying and vandalism? How will societies adapt to protect the qualities of life they value? No such dialogue in this book.

This would be a much better book if it thought a bit beyond describing the technology-enabling aspects of the digital age, and projected how they will change the lives of average people ('average' in both a Western sense, and in a global sense.) How will we stay healthy? How will we be entertained? What kind of work will we do? How will we be educated?

I did not find anything that I strongly disagreed with in the book, but I expected something more exciting and optimistic. I was bored after an hour, but kept listening assuming it would get better. It did not.

Were the concepts of this book easy to follow, or were they too technical?

The concepts were decidedly untechnical. It was much more like listening to a sociology textbook. Any technical analysis was facile and obvious. The writing style does not translate well into audio. Long sentences containing lists are comprehensive, but not particularly useful.

What do you think the narrator could have done better?

Narration was fine. The monotone reflected the character of the text.

Could you see The New Digital Age being made into a movie or a TV series? Who should the stars be?

Would you try another book from Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen and/or Roger Wayne?

This was a huge disappointment. I had big expectations when I first began listening to the book and then one "imagine one day in the future" after another really began to grate on me. After listening to the entire book it was readily apparent that the authors engaged in little more than a thinly veiled infomercial for Google while avoid so many of the complexities that come with our lives' data now living both on Google's servers and in the cloud in general. For anyone who has even a basic understand of global technology issues, this book will likely seem underwhelming.

This book speaks very little about future inventions (ok, so holographic displays and robots are mentioned). This is mainly a book about global politics and how people around the world will be enabled by technology (as if they're not already). What really disappoints me is that it feels like an exercise in stating the obvious. If you're unaware of "cloud" storage, or if you would be surprised to learn that cheap mobile phones and social media will help citizens of repressed countries to organize, then this might be the book for you.

I think a better title for this book would have been, "The Current Digital Age". The content was quite mundane. I never once felt a need to rewind a passage (which I typically do a lot of with other books).

The reader speaks very slowly. The good news is that I was able to play it in 2x mode and save half the time... I managed to finish it, but I could have gotten by on just the first and last chapters. If you're looking for a book about technology or futurism, there are better choices out there. For a new book from one of the top minds at Google, this isn't just disappointing - I feel ripped off.

Unlike some of the other reviewers I found this book interesting and thought provoking. The book went back and forth between what is coming in technology and how it can be used by the individual, corporation, or NGO, for good or bad. What I found most intriguing is their discussions on how government can use the coming technology for good or evil. Jared Cohen worked at the State Department under both Rice and Clinton so I felt he had a good understanding of the various types of government in the world and what they would or would not do with the technology. They went out of their way to point out technology such as, the smart phone, will give more power to all the people of the world. It was interesting how they see the use of communication technology in helping in natural or man made disasters in the world. They used the example of Haiti to show what would have worked better and how various technologies could improve the reconstruction phase post disaster. In listing all the new advancements coming in the future I felt like one day we will pass the wonders of Star Trek. One question they asked was, for each of us to think, at what point do we draw the line of how much privacy will we give up for security. Lots of information along with pros and cons of use and abuse, over all I was fascinated with the information in the book.

Would you ever listen to anything by Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen again?

NO

Would you be willing to try another one of Roger Wayne’s performances?

NO

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

Surprise in that this book is so out of touch with relevant society and humanity beyond social media.

Any additional comments?

This is a book that contains little if any information. It is as if a roomful of Huff Post auto-headline generators were in a virutal circular mirrored room. Kinda like the "do loop" from the days when programming mattered. This is what I would expect if twitter expanded to 141 characters.

The insightful message of this book could be reduced to "the internet will change the future". The content of the book is a rapid-fire stream of claims about the future, all made with absolute confidence, and little supporting evidence. This wasn't the worst futurist book I've read, but it certainly didn't bring me any useful insights.

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